DocFrance on the forums started a thread about this interesting story:

Lawmakers in the nation’s capital may be wringing their hands about record high gasoline prices. Others are putting their hands together — praying for help from a higher authority. Volunteers from a Washington, D.C., church soup kitchen launch a movement called Pray at the Pump.

A similar story happened late last year, when the governor of Georgia called for people to pray for rain. This one struck me as particularly absurd as it reminded me of stories of ancient tribes dancing around the fire to ask the fickle gods for rain. While everyone would consider the dancing to be ridiculous, on an intellectual level they are both asking for magic to make the world work differently. And that sort of conduct was much more excusable in ancient times when people didn’t understand how the world worked.

Why, exactly, do people think prayer works? People balk at the idea of magic or voodoo or anything like that, but how is prayer any different? There was actually a large study done in 2006 which concluded that prayer doesn’t help the sick. The thing that is most troubling about that study is that it ever had to be done in the first place.

I suppose that some people think prayer, the thought that god can help them, is comforting. However, the idea that some higher deity could at a whim mess around with how reality works is one of the most startlingly uncomfortable ideas I can think of. I will take my knowable reality any day.